In answer to the title’s question, Cahun was a Jewish, French lesbian who, from sexual and gender identity to the choices she made as a performative and visual artist, lived her life as a non-conformist. This was especially true while she was living under Nazi occupation.
Cahun’s transgressive instinct came into its own in Jersey of all places. The artist (who was born Lucy Schwob) and her photographer partner Marcel Moore (born Suzanne Malherbe) moved to the island after Cahun rejected Paris’s elitist and predictably chauvinist Surrealist movement.
DH Hill’s well-constructed play conveys this complexity through flashbacks to Paris in 1933 and Cahun’s childhood in Nantes where antisemitism was in the air and in the newspapers. The notorious Dreyfus affair was reaching its climax.
Yet the defining element of Cahun’s life in Jersey was the decision to become a “resistance artist”. The occupying Nazis were now the establishment and Cahun embarked on a deliciously subversive and creative campaign which, with the help of Moore, involved placing messages and posters around the island sowing confusion and doubt into the minds of the Germans.
How? Well, as those who are familiar with Radio 4 and Channel 4 documentaries on Cahun will know, the genius of the hundreds of messages she made was that they gave the impression of being written by a cast of disgruntled German officers and soldiers, and certainly not one rebellious author. Cahun, who is played here by Rivkah Bunker, called the letters “paper bullets”.
It is an engrossing story that brings to mind the brilliant Hans Fallada novel Alone in Berlin, which is about a couple who, grieving for their son who was killed on the Eastern front, express their anger at the Reich by placing subversive messages around the city. As with Cahun’s campaign the Gestapo became obsessed with finding who was responsible.
Yet David Furlong’s production only generates a fraction of the tension such circumstances demand. Cahun and Moore’s achievements are here filtered through our 21st-century obsession with gender politics. True, this was a hugely relevant dimension of Cahun’s life but it is emphasised here at the expense of conveying the scale, bravery and logistical complexity of Cahun’s campaign. None of this is easy to convey in a small-scale play in a tiny theatre, admittedly, but it is both essential and where the real drama of this story lies.
However, there are a few clever flourishes. When Moore (Amelia Armande) photographs her partner, projections of the original images powerfully remind us of the real-life versions of those on stage. Bunker conveys the self-obsession of an artist whose identity was the central question of her life until fighting the Nazis defined it. There is also a peach of performance by Ben Bela Böhm who plays many of the men in Cahun’s life including the surprisingly compassionate German Captain Boden.
Following the documentaries, the play feels late to the party, but the subject is endlessly fascinating.
Who is Claude Cahun?
Southwark Playhouse
